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Companion Classics. 



Recollections of Gladstone 



BY THE 



S 



Right Hon. James Bryce, 



Member of Parliament. 





Companion Classics. 



ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, 

By William Ewart Gladstone. 

A BOY SIXTY YEARS AGO, 

By Hon. Geo. F. Hoar. 

FAMOUS AMERICANS, 

By Hon. Justin McCarthy, M. P. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF GLADSTONE, 
By The Rt. Hon. James Bryce, M. P. 

PRICE, 10 CENTS EACH. 




Right Hon. James Bryce, M. P. 



Companion Classics. 



Recollections of Gladstone, 



Right Hon. James Bryce, 



Suggestions on Reading. 



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JJT^ TAKE |Diea5>jre i^ ,seKc|it\g you 
WitK our cohf\(DlinxcK-t^ thU fourth 
Cla^ic, restated ffonx th e column f 
The Yout^ CohrvjDaiMoK. We ^Kall feel 
gratified if you t^irxk its merit entitle* 
it to a (Dlace ih your library. 

Youhs v^ry truly, 




^TTHE impression which a great man makes 
■*■ upon his contemporaries — how he looked, 

| walked, taught, thought and did his work — will 
always have a freshness of interest and an 
historical value beyond any impressions gathered 

' or recorded by those who come after him. 

The pages which follow present one of the 
very greatest of men as he appeared to a personal 
friend and fellow worker, the Right Honorable 
James Bryce, M. P., a writer singularly qualified 
by temperament, training and opportunity to set 
forth the personality of " The Grand Old Man." 
It seems fitting that this happy union of a 
great subject and a distinguished author should 
be preserved in convenient and durable form ; and 
that to it should be added Mr. Bryce's views on 
a matter which filled a great place in Gladstone's 
life as well as in his own. 



Recollections of Gladstone. 




any list that could be made of the five 
or six most famous men of the generation 
which has now just quitted the earth, 
Mr. Gladstone would find a place — a place 
beside Bismarck, who survived him a few 
months, as well as Lincoln and Cavour, 
, L who died many years before him, but 
f belong to the same generation. There 
were so many sides to his character and 
such a wonderful variety in his powers^ 
that it would be impossible to convey 
an adequate idea either of the one or of 
the other within the space of a short article. I 
have made a study of them in a little volume 
published in America in the summer of 1898, 
and will not attempt to repeat here what was" 
said there. 

All that I desire to do in the few paragraphs 
of this article is to note certain aspects of his 
character which may be of special interest to 
young men who desire, at the time when they 
are forming their own habits of thought and life, 
to know what were the salient traits and mental 
qualities of those illustrious ones whose names 
filled and occupied the world when they were 
entering it. 

What most struck the person who spent a few 
days in the same house with Mr. Gladstone was 
the restless and unceasing activity of his mind. 
People often talked of his industry ; but industry 
rather suggests the steady and dogged application 



8 Recollections of Gladstone. 

which plods through a task because the task is 
set and has got to be despatched. He seemed to 
work because he liked it, or perhaps— rather 
because he could not help working. \His energy- 
was inexhaustible, and when he was not engaged 
on whatever might for the time being be deemed 
business, he was just as strenuousty occupied in 
studying or writing about some subject, quite 
unconnected with his regular employment, which 
for the moment interested him. 

His Varied Interests. 

Nearly everything, except perhaps natural 
science, of which he was strangely ignorant, did 
interest him. Theology and ecclesiastical history 
had the foremost place, but general history, clas- 
sical archaeology, poetry — especially the Greek 
and Italian poets — were always in his mind, and 
books about them might always be seen on his 
table. The abundance of his interests and the 
zest with which he indulged them were a great 
help to him, for they enabled him to throw off 
the cares of politics, and they distracted his 
thoughts from the inevitable vexations and dis- 
appointments of public life. It was his practice 
when he returned late at night from the House 
of Commons after an exciting debate to place a 
light at the head of his bed and read some agree- 
able but not too exciting book, often, but not 
always, a novel, for twenty minutes, after which 
he scarcely ever failed to have a good night's 
rest. 

Sometimes he felt the activity of his mind 
press too hard on him. I remember one misty 
evening, between ten and eleven o'clock, to have 
seen his remarkable figure a few yards before 






Recollections of Gladstone, g 

me in St. James's Park. There was no mistaking 
him, even at night, for his walk was peculiar, 
indeed, so peculiar that people who did not know 
him would turn to watch him as he passed along 
the street. Thinking it hardly safe for him, 
well known as he was, to be alone in so solitary 
a place, I overtook him and asked if I might 
walk by him, apologizing if I should be disturbing 
his thoughts. 

"My wish," he answered, with a touch of 
sadness, "and my difficulty is to avoid thinking, 
so I am glad to be disturbed." And a year or 
two later he told me that to rest and distract his 
mind he had formed the habit of counting the 
omnibuses he met in the space of three or four 
hundred yards between his residence in Downing 
Street and the House of Commons, so as to see 
whether he could make an average of them, 
based on a comparison of the number that passed 
each day. 

Habits of Exercise. 

Unlike most Englishmen, he cared nothing 
for any games or for any form of what is called 
sport. As a youth he used to shoot a little, and 
on one occasion hurt a finger so badly that it had 
to be cut off by a country doctor. It was before 
the days of chloroform, and he described the pain 
as terrible. Like Sir Robert Peel, he was very 
sensitive to physical pain. But before he reached 
middle life he had given up shooting. Nor did 
he ride. Indeed, his only form of exercise, 
besides walking, was the felling of trees in his 
.p_ark at Ha warden, j This practically restricted" 
£ him, except when at Hawarden, to intellectual 
pleasures for recreation. Sometimes, however, 



io Recollections of Gladstone. 

he would play whist or, more frequently, back- 
gammon, a game which makes very slight calls 
upon memory or reflection. 

This wonderful activity of mind did not seem 
to spring from any sense of haste or pressure to 
get through one piece of work in order to go 
on to something else. He was never in a hurry, 
never seemed anxious, even when the time was 
short, to finish a job off in an incomplete way in 
order to despatch the work which remained, but 
went straight on through everything at the same 
pace, reminding one of the strong, steady, uni- 
Jb*ra-st £Qke of the p iston of a steam-engine. 

Wise Use of Time. 

I remember how, having once called on him by 
appointment at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
I found him just sitting down to arrange his 
thoughts for a great speech he had to make the 
same afternoon at a crisis in the Eastern question. 
He wished information on a point that happened 
to be within my knowledge, and besides ques- 
tioning me very deliberately upon it, talked in 
a leisurely way on the subject at large as if he 
had nothing else to do. At five o'clock he rose to 
deliver one of his longest and finest speeches, 
which it would have taken most men days to 
prepare for. However, he never wanted words ; 
all his care was to be sure of the facts and to 
dispose the matter of a speech in the proper 
order. 

In many people a high sense of the value 
of time produces unpunctuality, because they 
desire to crowd more things into the day than 
the day permits. It was not so with him. He 
got rapidly through work, not by haste, but by 



Recollections of Gladstone. n 

extreme concentration of his faculties upon it. 
And as he was never in a hurry, he scarcely ever 
failed to keep an appointment. 

It was not only time that he hated to see 
squandered. He disliked waste in everything. 
Any heedless or lax expenditure of public money 
displeased him, not merely because it increased 
the burdens of the people, but because it seemed 
to him stupid and wrong — a sort of offense 
against reason. He was just as careful about 
public money as if it came out of his own pocket. 

Dislike of Extravagance. 

Once in the little garden behind his official 
residence he lamented that the surface was all 
gravel, saying that the wife of his predecessor 
had caused the turf which had formerly been 
there to be taken away for the sake of her garden 
parties. When asked why he did not have the 
turf put back, he answered that it would cost 
too much. "How much?" He named a sum, 
which, to the best of my recollection, was less 
than two hundred dollars, and evidently thought 
this cost more than he ought to ask the country 
to bear. 

He used to express surprise at the modern 
English habit of using cabs to go quickly over a 
short distance in a city, contrasting it with the 
frugality of his contemporaries in his early days, 
when vehicles plying for hire were scarce. Such 
vehicles are comparatively cheap in London, 
where one can go two miles for a shilling fare— 
a quarter of a dollar; yet the constant use of 
them seemed to him a mark of extravagance. 
His eagerness to keep down the public expendi- 
ture was not much appreciated by the people, 



L.ofC 



12 Recollections of Gladstone. 

for during the last thirty years public opinion in 
England has become quite careless regarding the 
raising and spending of revenue. 

This dislike of all needless expenditure accorded 
with the simplicity of his own life. ( He had an 
almost puritanical aversion to luxury in dress, 
in food, in the furniture of a house, in the external 
paraphernalia of life, and never went beyond the 
requirements of modest comfort. All his ideals 
were of the moral sort, all his pleasures of the 
intellectual sort. Although as a political econo- 
mist and a financier he rejoiced iu the extraordi- 
nary growth of wealth in England, he saw with 
disquiet the habits of luxury and the tendencies 
of thought and taste which wealth brought with 
it, and often declared that the humbler classes 
were far more likely to be right in their political 
opinions than the rich and great, notwithstanding 
the advantages which education ought to give the 
latter. 



Political Integrity. 

The presence in the legislature of men really 
indifferent to political issues, but seeking to use 
their position for the promotion of their private 
pecuniary objects, filled him with alarm. To 
most observers it does not seem to be at this 
moment an actively increasing evil in England. 
But I recollect that in 1897, after he had retired 
from public life, he dwelt upon it as the greatest 
danger that threatened parliamentary institu- 
tions. I His pride, which was great, showed itself 
in his high sense of personal honor and dignity, 
a sense so high as almost to exclude vanity, any 
manifestation of which he would have thought 



Recollections of Gladstone. 13 

beneath him. ) It never appeared in the inter- 
course of private life. 

No one was more agreeable and easy in con- 
versation. He gave unstintingly the best he had 
to give, and gave it to all alike, to the person of 
least as readily as to the person of most conse- 
quence.' Although he talked copiously and in a 
somewhat oratorical fashion, with gestures and 
modulations of voice which reminded one of his 
speeches, he never tried to absorb the conver- 
sation, and was always quick to listen to any 
one who had some new facts to give, especially 
if they lay within the lines of his historical and 
theological interests. His respect for learning 
was so great that he was sometimes imposed 
upon by people who professed more than they 
possessed. Still greater was his respect for the 
gift of poetical creation; 

His Intellectual Tastes. 

In a remarkable letter which he wrote after 
the death of Alfred Tennyson to the poet's 
eldest son, the present I/Ord Tennyson, and 
which is printed in the second edition of the 
latter's life of his father, he expressed with char- 
acteristic force his sense of the superiority of 
the genius which speaks to all succeeding ages 
through immortal verse to the talent of the states- 
man, whose work is done by lower methods and 
for his own time, and who is soon forgotten. 
; Poetry and philosophy were to him the highest 
forms of human effort, and philosophy he valued 
chiefly as the handmaid of theology, taking — so 
far as his friends could discover — no very great 
interest in metaphysics proper, but only in such 
parts of them as could be made to support or 



14 Recollections of Gladstone. 

explain morality and religion. His own favorite 
philosopher was Bishop Butler, in whom he 
found the union of these elements which he 
desired. 

Toward German metaphysics, and per-haps. 
even toward German literature in general, he 
betrayed a slight prejudice/ which seemed to 
spring from his dislike of the influence German 
thought of a skeptical order had exercised in the 
days of his early manhood. 

{ Italian poets were his favorites, next after 
Greek and Knglish ones ; indeed, he sometimes 
seemed inclined to put Dante at the head of all 
poets./ How far this was due to his sympathy 
with Dante's theology it was not easy to deter- 
mine. He would not have admitted it to be so, 
although, as every one knows, he tried to dis- 
cover traces of Christian theology in the mythol- 
ogy of Homer. But he was more influenced by 
likings and aversions of this kind than he himself 
realized, being by no means what people call 
"objective" or detached in his judgments. 
Moreover, although sincere and earnest in seeking 
for truth, his mental methods were really more 
forensic than judicial, and he seldom delivered 
conclusions which had not been more or less 
colored by the feelings of sympathy or repulsion 
which made him unconsciously adopt a view and 
then find arguments for it. 

A Sanguine Leader. 

This was in one way an advantage to him in 
public life. It helped to make him sanguine. 
When he desired a thing, he found it easy to 
deem it attainable. Sometimes he erred by un- 
derrating the forces opposed to him. But on the 



Recollections of Gladstone* 15 

whole he gained by the cheerful eagerness with 
which he threw himself into enterprises from 
which less hopeful men recoiled as impracti- 
cable.; The warmth of his feelings, although it 
sometimes betrayed him into language of undue 
vehemence in denouncing what he thought unjust 
conduct or pernicious principle, did not make 
him harsh in his judgment of persons or unfair 
in his treatment of them. 

A Keen Judge of Human Nature. 

In private he discussed people's character and 
capacities very freely. Few things were more 
instructive than to sit beside him and listen to 
the running commentary which he would make 
on the speakers in a House of Commons debate, 
noting the strong and weak points which they 
showed, and delivering estimates of their respect- 
ive abilities. 

Such estimates were sometimes trenchant in 
exposing the pretensions of showy men, who 
imposed on the outside world. But they were 
hardly ever bitter. Bven the antagonists who 
attacked him with violence or spite, forgetting 
the respect due to his age and position, did not 
seem to rouse any personal resentment in his 
large and charitable mind. Indeed, his friends 
often thought that he erred on the side of in- 
dulgence, and honored by elaborate refutation 
persons whom he had better have dismissed with 
a few words of contempt. 

I cannot recall a single instance in which he 
seemed to be actuated by a revengeful wish to 
punish a person who had assailed or injured him, 
but I recall many in which he refrained from 
opportunities others would have used. How far 



1 6 Recollections of Gladstone. 

this was due to indifference, how far to a sense 
of Christian duty, was a question often discussed 
by those who watched him. Perhaps it was 
partly due to his pride, which led him to deem it 
below his dignity to yield to vulgar passions. 

r Tranquillity in Great Crises. 

One of the strange contrasts which his char- 
acter presented was that between his excitability 
on small occasions and his perfect composure on 
great ones. He would sometimes, in a debate 
which had arisen suddenly, say imprudent things, 
owing to the strength of his emotions ; would 
then go beyond what his friends had expected, 
and give a dangerous opening to his adversaries. 
At another time, when the crisis was more 
serious, he would present a perfectly tranquil 
demeanor) and give no sign, either at the decisive 
moment or afterward, that he had been holding 
his feelings in the strictest control, and straining 
all his powers to go exactly as far as it was safe 
to go and not an inch farther. 

At such times his easy confidence in his own 
powers was an interesting object of study. Once 
in his later life when a question of great delicacy 
and difficulty was coming on in the House of 
Commons, and everybody expected to see him 
watchful and alert and perhaps fidgety over it, 
he deliberately composed himself to sleep on the 
Treasury bench, and enjoyed a refreshing nap 
till the time came for him to speak, when with 
no apparent effort he awoke, delivered a speech 
in which he said exactly what was needed and 
not a word more, and sat down, leaving his 
opponents so puzzled by the safe and guarded 
generalities in which he had half-expressed and 



Recollections of Gladstone. 17 

half-reserved his views that the subject dropped 
in a short time, because no one could find in his 
words anything to lay hold of. It was often re- 
marked that the greater the emergency the more 
composed and the more completely equal to it 
did he seem. 

This was a result of the amazing strength of 
his will, which enabled him to hold his emotions 
in check and summon all his intellectual re- 
sources into the field whenever he desired to do 
so. People who noted this strength of will and 
saw how much he towered over his colleagues 
assumed that he must be self-willed in the or- 
dinary sense of the word, that is to say, obstinate 
and overbearing. This was by no means the case. 
He was very patient in listening to arguments 
from those who differed from him, and not more 
difficult to persuade than many people of far less 
powerful volition. 

Yielding to the Majority. 

Not a few instances could be given in which 
he consented to acts which his own judgment dis- 
approved because the majority of his colleagues 
were inclined the other way ; and in most of 
these instances it is probable that he was right. 
He used to refer to some of them afterward, 
freely condemning some of the acts of his own 
government, but never, so far as I can recollect, 
taking credit to himself for having counseled the 
wiser course. He was too proud to indulge in 
the "I told you so's" of smaller men. 

The force of his will showed itself, not in that 
tyrannical spirit which cannot brook resistance, 
but in the unconquerable tenacity with which 
he held his course in the face of obstacles when 



1 8 Recollections of Gladstone. 

he had made up his mind that a thing must at 
all hazards be attempted. It was a part of his 
courage, and his courage was magnificent. 



His Physical Courage. 

Physical fear was unknown to him. At the 
time when, after the Phcenix Park murders, he 
was believed to be, and probably really was, in 
danger of assassination, and shortly afterward, 
when several attempts to kill people and destroy 
buildings by dynamite had been made in London, 
it was thought necessary to guard his person, 
and the persons of some of his colleagues, by 
policemen who were charged to follow them about 
everywhere. This protection was most distasteful 
to him, and although to please his friends he 
generally submitted to it, he could not resist the 
temptation occasionally to escape. 

There is a back way out of the House of 
Commons by which it is possible to get to the 
Thames Embankment, a wide and lonely thor- 
oughfare bordering the river, the view from which 
over the river is always striking, and most so 
just before sunrise when the morning star flames 
up above St. Paul's Cathedral, and the dawn, 
brightening over the city, begins to redden the 
broad stream beneath. By this way he used to 
pass out late at night, eluding the vigilance of 
the police, and enjoy a solitary stroll under the 
stars before returning to his house, indifferent to 
the dangers which others feared for him. 

So, too, on his journeys to and from London, 
and in his walks round Hawarden, he insisted 
on reducing the precautions taken to the lowest 
point that his friends would permit, hating the 



Recollections of Gladstone. 19 

idea that any one would attempt to harm him, 
and having no apprehensions for himself. 

The circumstances of his life and career called 
more frequently for the exercise of moral courage 
than of physical, nor is there any career in which 
such courage is more essential either to success 
or to a man's own inward peace and satisfaction 
than that of a statesman in a popularly governed 
country. Whoever enters upon such a career 
must be prepared to be often misunderstood 
and still more often misrepresented. He is sure 
to excite enmities, — and that not only from 
opponents, — and he will from time to time have 
to face unpopularity if he obeys his conscience. 

The Quality Which He Most Valued. 

In an admirable speech delivered in the House 
of Lords just after Mr. Gladstone's death, Lord 
Rosebery referred to his frequent use of the 
word "manly" as indicating the quality which 
he most valued. It was one which he never 
failed to practise. He was cautious, carefully 
examining beforehand the country he was going 
to traverse. If he thought the risks of failure 
too great, he might choose some other course. 
But once he had chosen his course, no threats of 
opponents, no qualms and tremors of friends 
could turn him from it. 

Difficulties rather stimulated that wonderful 
reserve of fighting force which he possessed. 
None of his colleagues ever heard him suggest 
as a reason for dropping a measure or recoiling 
from an executive act the personal attacks to 
which he or they would be exposed. It was a 
consideration that never crossed his mind, and 
this became so well known to those who were 



20 Recollections of Gladstone. 

around him that they did not think of suggesting 
it as one which could affect his action . Although, 
as has been already observed, he was impetuous, 
and sometimes threw too much passion into a 
speech when he had become excited, this courage 
had nothing to do with his impetuosit)', and was 
just as manifest when he was weighing a question 
in cold blood. 

Mr. Gladstone had his deficiencies, and even 
his faults. No one who knew him need wish to 
deny them, because his great qualities were far 
more than sufficient to eclipse them. But I think 
that those who studied him closely in private as 
well as in public would have agreed in holding 
that they were faults rather of intellect than of 
character, so far as it is possible to distinguish 
these two things. 

His High-Mindedness. 

It was, of course, chiefly by his intellectual 
gifts that he was known and for them that he 
was admired. Yet that which seemed most 
worthy of admiration in a man who had seen so 
much of the world, and might well have been 
hardened by it, was the freshness and warmth 
of his feelings and the lofty plane on which his 
thoughts moved. In discussing a subject with 
him, one was often struck by the tendency of 
his mind to become fantastic, to miss the central 
point of a question, to rely upon a number of 
fine-drawn and subtle arguments instead of one 
or two solid ones. But if an appeal was made to 
his love of humanity and justice and freedom, he 
never failed to respond. 

He hated cruelty. One of the strongest motives 
he had for taking up the cause of Irish Home 



Recollections of Gladstone. 21 

Rule was his horror at the atrocities which had 
been perpetrated in Ireland at the end of the 
eighteenth century. He would often speak of 
them with a sense of shame as well as anger, 
which made one imagine that he thought some 
kind of expiation for them required from Eng- 
land. It was the same loathing for cruelty and 
oppression that made him in 1876-78, and again 
in his latest years, so ardent an advocate of the 
cause of the Eastern Christians. 

Standard of Personal Honor. 

\He had a very strong sense of public duty. 
His standard of personal honor was high in 
small things as well as in greatp and I may 
illustrate this by saying that, extremely ingen- 
ious as he was in debate and extremely anxious 
to prevail, I cannot recall an instance in which 
he knowingly misrepresented an adversary's 
words, or used an argument which he himself 
knew to be fallacious, although these are the 
most familiar devices of parliamentary contro- 
versy, devices which, censurable as they certainly 
are, are used by many men deemed fair and 
trustworthy in the relations of private life. 

His view of human nature was always chari- 
table and even indulgent. Sometimes it was too 
indulgent, yet this is the better side on which to 
err. The memory of these things, and of his 
magnanimity and of his courage, abides with 
those who knew him, and figures more largely 
in their estimate of his worth and his place in 
English history than does their admiration for 
his dazzling intellectual powers and his tireless 
intellectual energy. *•"*" 




Some Suggestions on Reading. 



[EVER read a poor book. By a poor 
book, I mean a weak book, a thin book. 
a book in which the facts are loosely or 
inaccurately stated, or are ill-arranged, 
a book in which the ideas are either vague or 
commonplace. There are so many good books in 
the world, and we have so little time for reading 
them, that it is a pity and a waste of opportu- 
nities to spend any of that time on the inferior 
books, which jostle us at every turn, and often 
prevent us from noticing the good ones. 

Sometimes, of course, it happens that there is 
no first-rate book on the subject one desires to 
study, say an out-of-the-way department of 
history or of science. Then, of course, we must 
read what we can get, a second- or third-rate 
book if there is nothing better to be had. But 
most branches of knowledge have now been 
dealt with by strong, clear, competent writers ; 
and it is well worth while to take pains to find 
out who has handled the subject best before one 
buys, or takes out of a public library, a treatise 
upon it. 

In the higher kinds of literature, such as 
poetry and philosophy, the maxim that one 
ought to spend one's time upon the very best is 
still more true. Whatever else young people 
read in those pleasant days when the cares of 
life and the calls of a business or a profession 
have not yet closed around them, they ought 
to read, and to learn to love, the masterpieces 



"**"—'■■* n JL. n wan n 



Some Suggestions on Reading. 23 

of our literature, aud especially of our poetry, 
so that they may, for the rest of their lives, 
associate these masterpieces with the sweet 
memories of youth. 

If they know enough of Greek or I,atin, of 
Italian or of German, to be able to enjoy the 
great classical authors who have used those 
tongues, so much the better. A classic who 
belongs to another age and country is in some 
ways even more stimulating and impressive than 
one who has written in English, or one who has 
lived near to our own time, because he represents 
a different circle of ideas and enlarges our notions 
of human life and thought by describing life and 
conveying thought in forms remote from our 
own. 

The Value of Foreign Languages. 

If you are fortunate enough to know Greek 
and Ivatin, read the writers in the original. 
More than half the charm, and a good deal of the 
substantial value, is lost in the best translation. 
It is better to make out the original even slowly 
and with difficulty than to hurry through it 
in an English version, although sometimes an 
English version may be used to help one over 
the roughest parts of the road. 

If you do not know the ancient languages, 
try to know some modern one ; if you have not 
time for that, give yourself all the more earnestly 
to some great English writers, and especially to 
the poets, because they put fine thoughts into 
the most perfect form, which it is more easy 
to remember, and which becomes a standard of 
taste, whereby one may learn to discern the good 
and the evil in the literature of one's own time. 



24 Some Suggestions on Reading. 

Those who find that they cannot enjoy poetry 
must, of course, content themselves with prose ; 
but the best prose will not do as much for mind 
and taste and style as good poetry does. 

Acknowledged Masterpieces. 

Some one may say that the advice to read only 
the strong books and eschew the weak ones is 
hard to follow, because how is a young man or 
woman to know from their titles which books 
are the best in the subject he or she desires to 
study? This objection does not apply to the 
masterpieces, for every one agrees that Shake- 
speare and Milton and Wordsworth and Keats 
and Bacon and Burke and Scott and Daniel 
Webster and Macaulay, not to speak of the men 
of our own time, whose rank has not yet been 
conclusively settled, have taken their place as 
great writers whom an educated person ought to 
know. But I admit that it does apply to the 
books which any one who is interested in history, 
or in some branch of natural science, or in social 
or political or theological inquiries, will desire 
to peruse. 

In these departments of knowledge there are 
comparatively few books that have reached the 
rank of classics ; and as they are more or less 
progressive departments of knowledge, the stu- 
dent naturally desires to find a recent book, 
which will give him the latest results of investi- 
gation. 

How, then, is he to know the best recent 
books ? He cannot trust advertisements and 
press notices. He might as well believe an 
epitaph. 

In these circumstances the youth ought to ask 



Some Suggestions on Reading. 25 

the advice of a person conversant with the 
subject. If he is or has been a student at a 
college, let him ask his professor. If he has not 
that chance, he is almost sure to know some 
person who can either give him light or get it for 
him from some other quarter. If, however, he 
knows no one likely to be able to help him, and 
applies to a stranger who is a recognized author- 
ity on the subject, — enclosing an addressed 
envelope, so as to give the authority as little 
trouble as possible, — he is pretty certain to have 
a friendly and helpful reply. Those who are 
fond of a subject are almost always willing to 
help other students less advanced than them- 
selves, if they see reason to believe from the 
student's letter that he is a bona fide applicant, 
and not merely an autograph-hunter. 

The Place of Fiction. 

The same principles apply to fiction as to 
other books. There is plenty of good fiction in 
the world, and, indeed, in the English language 
alone ; quite enough to occupy so much leisure 
as fiction may fairly claim ; and it is folly to 
read thin or vapid or extravagant fiction, while 
leaving the better romances or novels untouched, 
merely because they are not of our own immediate 
time. 

Happily we have enough good fiction of our 
own time to enable any one to "keep in touch," 
as people say, with modern taste, as well as to 
know the best that the past has given us. By 
good books of fiction I mean books which enlarge 
one's knowledge of human nature, either human 
nature generally or the human nature of some 
other age and country, — like a vigorous historical 



26 Some Suggestions on Reading. 

romance, — books which contain impressive pic- 
tures of character, or striking dramatic situations, 
books which sparkle with wit or wisdom, or 
whose humor sets familiar things in a new light. 

We have at least nine English writers some 
at least of whose works belong to this cate- 
gory — Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen, Miss 
Bdgeworth, Walter Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, 
Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, — not to speak 
of living writers, — while one or more of the tales 
of Miss Burney, of Fenimore Cooper, of Wash- 
ington Irving, of Disraeli, of Meadows Taylor, 
possibly of Bulwer, also, may deserve to be 
placed in the same category. 

If we add foreign novelists whose works have 
been translated, — for a novel loses far less by 
translation than a poem, — the list of powerful 
works of fiction available in our own language 
might be almost indefinitely increased. Not all 
these writers can be called classics, but from all 
of them much may be drawn which an active 
mind will appropriate and find permanently 
enjoyable. 

Permanence of Impressions. 

A second maxim is to try to carry away 
something from every book you read. If a book 
is worth reading, it is worth remembering. One 
cannot remember everything ; and to each person 
the things worth remembering will differ accord- 
ing to his tastes and the amount of insight he 
brings with him. But every one may carry 
away something, and may thus feel that the 
book leaves him to some degree richer than it 
found him ; that it has helped him to add to his 
stock in trade, so to speak, of facts or of ideas. 



Some Suggestions on Reading. 27 

If it has not done this, why should one have 
spent so much eyesight upon it ? Why not 
have given the time to bicycling or baseball, or 
have lain down upon the grass and watched 
white clouds flit across the sky? 

How to remember the contents of a good book, 
or at least the best part of them, is a difficult 
problem, and one which grows more difficult the 
older one grows, for the memory is less retentive 
in middle life than in youth, and the pressure of 
daily work in a profession or in business tends 
to clog the free play of intellectual movement in 
spheres distinct from that work. The most 
obvious plan is to make notes of the things that 
strike you most. This involves time and trouble, 
yet the time and trouble are not lost, for the 
mere effort of selecting the salient facts, or of 
putting into a concise form the salient ideas, 
helps to impress them on the mind, so that they 
have more chance of being remembered, even 
should the notes be lost. 

If the book belongs to you, it is not a bad 
device to use the blank sheet or two which one 
often finds inside the covers for making brief 
notes, adding references to the pages ; or if there 
are no blank sheets, to paste in two or three and 
use them for this purpose. 

The Value of System. 

Methodical habits and no small measure of 
perseverance are needed for such a system. I 
have myself tried it only to a very small extent, 
and have consequently forgotten a great deal I 
should like to have remembered ; but I know 
those who have steadily worked upon it, and 
who recommend it warmly. They say, with 



28 Some Suggestions on Reading. 

truth, that it forces one to think as one goes 
along, that it keeps the mind active instead of 
passive, that it helps one to discover whether the 
author has really anything to say, or is merely 
putting off one with words. 

Then further, it is generally better to read 
upon some regular lines rather than in a purely 
desultory fashion. To have a fresh curiosity, 
alive to all that passes in the world of letters or of 
science, is no doubt good ; but to try to read even 
the few best books in more than a few branches 
is out of the question. The field of knowledge 
has now grown too wide and too much sub- 
divided. For most of us the safer plan is to 
choose some one, or at most some two or three 
subjects, and so direct our reading as to concen- 
trate it upon them, and make each book we 
study help the others, and carry us further 
forward in the subject. 

Know One Subject Well. 

To know even one subject pretty thoroughly 
is a great gain to a man. It gives him something 
to think about apart from his daily occupations. 
It forms in him the habit of sound criticism, 
and enables him, even in subjects with which he 
has only a speaking acquaintance, to detect im- 
posture, and discover when a writer is really 
competent. 

The suggestion that reading should not be 
desultory, nor take too wide a range, does not of 
course mean to exclude poetry and fiction from 
any one's reading. So little good poetry appears 
from year to year that the time needed to read it 
is but small ; while fiction is read so rapidly that 
it does not interfere with the pursuit of any 



Some Suggestions on Reading, 29 

other regular line of study for which a man may- 
find that he has a taste. 

What I wish to dissuade is the notion which 
some men, and more women, entertain, that it is 
the duty of a person of cultivation to try to read 
all, or even a large proportion, of the books of 
importance, or reputed importance, that are from 
time to time published on various topics. There 
is no use trying to do this. 

Knowledge at First Hand. 

Read the works of the great authors before you 
read criticisms upon them. Let them make their 
own simple impression on your mind ; and only 
after they have done so, read what other people 
have said about them. If the book is sufficiently 
important, and you have time enough, you can 
afterward plunge into the comments and criti- 
cisms, or may study the life of the author, and 
see what were the conditions which helped to 
mold him. But the main thing is to read him 
in the first instance with your own eyes, and not 
through some one else's spectacles. 

Sometimes it is better not to read much about 
the personal life of an author. He may have 
put the best of himself into his books, and the 
record of his private history may diminish the 
strength of their impression. There are, of 
course, some pieces of criticism by eminent 
writers upon other writers which are themselves 
masterpieces, and ought to be read by whoever 
wants to know how to comprehend and judge 
works of imagination. 

Whoever desires to retain through life the 
habit of reading books and of thinking about 
them will do well never to intermit that habit, 



30 Some Suggestions on Reading. 

not even for a few weeks or months. This is 
a remark abundantly obvious to those whose 
experience of life has taught them how soon and 
how completely habit gains command of us. Its 
force cannot be realized by those who are just 
beginning life, when an unbounded space of 
time seems to stretch before us, and we feel a 
splendid confidence in the power of our will to 
accomplish all we desire. The critical moment 
is that at which one enters on a business or a 
profession, or the time when one marries. 

Lifelong Benefits. 

Those who are fortunate enough to keep up 
the practice of reading, outside the range of their 
occupation, for two or three years after that 
moment, may well hope to keep it up for the 
rest of their lives, and thereby not only to 
sustain their intellectual growth, but to find a 
resource against the worries and vexations and 
disappointments which few of us escape. To 
have some pursuit or taste by turning to which 
in hours of leisure one can forget the vexations, 
and give the mind a thorough rest from them, 
does a great deal to smooth the path of life. 

How is a business man, or one engaged in 
such a profession as law or medicine, to find the 
time for systematic reading? One way is to 
spend less time in reading newspapers and 
periodicals than most people now spend. News- 
papers no doubt contain a vast mass of useful 
information. I have often been astonished at 
the quantity of readable and instructive matter 
to be found, for instance, in the Sunday editions 
of the leading New York and Boston and Chicago 
daily papers. So there is a vast mass of good 



Some Suggestions on Reading. 31 

writing in the magazines. The trouble is, to 
use a familiar phrase, that one cannot possibly 
remember what one reads in these miscellaneous 
piles of information, first because one skims 
through them in a quick, unrefiective way ; 
secondly because each article drives the article 
before it out of one's head. 

Careful Discernment. 

The use of reading is to be measured not by 
the number of lines of print over which the eye 
has travelled, but by the force of the stimulus 
given to the mind and the amount of knowledge 
carried away. In the case of the newspaper 
the stimulus is feeble, because one reads in a 
light and listless fashion whatever has not a 
direct business interest, while the information, 
as already observed, is too large and too multi- 
farious to be retained by the most powerful 
memory for more than a few hours. It runs out 
of the mind like water through a sieve. 

So one of the most useful habits a young man 
can form is that of learning rapidly to select and 
pounce upon those items of news in a paper 
which are either of great general importance or 
specially significant to himself, and to let the 
rest go unread. He will miss some things he 
might like to have seen, but he will gain far 
more by having time available for other purposes. 
The maxim of the famous Roman, that one must 
be willing to remain in ignorance of some things, 
seems truer and truer the longer one lives, for 
experience teaches that it is more profitable to 
do and to know a few things well than many 
things badly. 



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